Post 320 hopes to heat up fast

Wednesday

Jun 27, 2012 at 12:01 AMJun 27, 2012 at 11:22 PM

With the Xaverian Brothers High baseball team getting to the sectional final for the third straight year, winning the state title for the first time since 2004, it has meant Westwood American Legion Post 320 has found itself in the precarious position of having games backlogged.

Keith Pearson/Staff Writer

With the Xaverian Brothers High baseball team getting to the sectional final for the third straight year, winning the state title for the first time since 2004, it has meant Westwood American Legion Post 320 has found itself in the precarious position of having games backlogged.

“That’s pretty much been the norm for us for the last four or five years, with the expanded season this year it certainly helps, because we have more off days available to make these games up,” said Westwood manager Dick Paster. “Unfortunately we’ve had a couple of rainouts so we’re starting to burn through those off days. It’s something we’ve done and we’re used to doing it.”

A year ago, the 18-game regular season ran from June 8 to July 10 before the start of district playoffs. The format has been changed up a bit this year with the regular season being expanded to 22 games, with July 20 as the final day of the regular season.

In the past, the district tournament sent teams to the South sectional tournament and on to the state department championship, with the winner of going to the Northeast Regional Tournament. This year, the District 6 division leaders through play on July 9 – each team was originally scheduled to play 18 games by that point – will meet in a one-game playoff on July 11, with the winner to represent District 6 in the state tournament that will run July 16-18. The eight-team, single-elimination tournament will represent Massachusetts at the Northeast Regional Tournament in Old Orchard Beach, Maine, Aug. 9-13 with a spot in the World Series on the line.

Everyone, other than the winner of the department championship, will be vying for a spot in what has been rebranded as the “Intrastate Tournament” and will follow the old format of the district tournament feeding the sectional tournament and eventually the eight-team state tournament, to be held Aug. 4-8 in New Bedford.

Whichever team is involved in the state tournament will return to district play when complete to finish out the regular season. If the winner of the “National Bound Tournament” at Worcester Academy comes from District 6, that team will finish the regular season, but not play in the district tournament.

“I’ve heard nothing but people being happy with this because we’re now back to being a summer program. When I first started coaching in this 26 years ago, we were a summer program, we went through July, we had our playoffs the last week of July and went to the department tournament in the beginning of August, just like this,” said Paster. “Since then, the MIAA has increased their season a week and (American Legion) has moved the World Series (up) a week so we now have our season cut back to – at best – a five-week season, and for teams who go deep in the MIAA Tournament, they’re looking at a three-week season and a team that goes to the finals we’re looking at a 20-day season and that’s why we had to reduce the season from 24 games down to 18 games and we were not a summer baseball program. Our season was finishing right after the Fourth of July.”

Post 320 didn’t get its first game in until June 17 -- 11 days after the start of the season -- and has gotten out of the gate slow at 1-4. That has Westwood in ninth place out of 10 teams through Monday’s games, though it has between three and five games in hand on the rest of District 6 West. While it seems that the slow start has taken out much of any realistic chance of Westwood qualifying for the National Tournament, it would not be out of the realm of possibility to make an impact in the race for a spot in the district tournament with a finish in the top half of the standings.

Westwood certainly has the talent to get it done, led by Xaverian’s Chris Hoyt at second base coming off an outstanding MIAA Tournament during his senior year before heading off to Stonehill in the fall. Joining him on the right side of the infield is Hawk teammate Mike LaVita. The duo will be asked to do a lot, particularly offensively.

The left side of the infield has a pair of rising seniors at Xaverian, Post 320 returnee Aaron Drummey at third and newcomer Will Shaughnessy at shortstop.

Matt Nagle, one of just two Westwood High players on the roster, is the starting left fielder with Mark Stefaniak or Steve Ashe in center with Aidan Desrosiers in right.

A pair of Catholic Memorial products will handle the bulk of the catching in John Allaire and Andrew Collins, with Alex Lo of Westwood High also available.

Post 320 was dealt a setback before the season started as Pat Maloney, who was expected to be at or near the top of the rotation, was shut down for a few weeks following the high school season with Dedham. Paster hopes to have the rising senior before the year is complete.

Stefaniak, a left-hander, was the Hawks top option in relief and will get plenty of opportunities.

Shaughnessy pitched well in defeat last Tuesday against Norwood, done in by a three-run home run that did not clear the fence with much room to spare gave Post 70 the lead.

Desrosiers went the distance against Norfolk last Thursday with seven strikeouts for the lone win to date while Paul Regan, who pitched J.V. ball at Xaverian should get a look.

According to Paster, Tim Prior of Catholic Memorial and Matt Maloney of Dedham could also get some time on the mound.

“We have time to turn things around, there’s been a couple games we really haven’t been in, there’s been a couple of losses we’ve been in right to the end and we didn’t do anything,” said Paster. “The team is somewhat young, we don’t have a lot of depth hitting, we have young guys toward the bottom of the lineup. The top has to do the hitting for us.

“I expect as we get into the season, and they get more at-bats and more comfortable the team will pick up. They play well defensively and if you get some pitching, generally you’re going to be in ball games. Whether we’re going to get into that top five that remains to be seen, but I think we’ll be somewhere in the middle of the pack.”

Drummey and LaVita each had RBI groundouts Sunday in a 10-2 loss to Foxboro. Post 93 broke open a close game with a five-run sixth.

In last Thursday’s 13-3 win over Norfolk, Drummey was 3-for-4 including a two-run home run in the fourth as Post 320 erased an early 3-0 deficit. Drummey finished with three RBI while Hoyt was 2-for-5 with three RBI and Matt Maloney had a pair of hits and knocked in a run.

Stefaniak, LaVita and Hoyt each drove in last Tuesday’s 5-3 loss to Norwood.